Spiritual Blindness

It is an uncomfortable feeling that comes around every so often and worsens with age. People are watching me take my spectacles off and squint when reading, writing or looking at photos. They think to themselves, even if they make no comments out loud, 

"Should've gone to … a certain well-known firm of opticians". 

The optician (or optometrist, as we must now call some of them at least) has duly given me a new prescription. It prompts me to look up a passage from 2 Corinthians (4:3-6 ESV):

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

I ponder afresh the two different types of blindness that Jesus and His followers identified: physical blindness and spiritual blindness.

Jesus saw His work as applying healing on both levels. He would sometimes perform miracles of giving sight to the blind. As He did so, He gave teaching about the need of the people for spiritual sight.

There is a widespread blindness to such things in our country now. We tend to believe only what we can see. Surely we should wake up to the fact that, even in the material realm, over 80% of our universe is said to be unseen (“Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy”).

I often think how spiritual blindness may be at work when people pass churches, some times daily for many years, and simply do not notice that they are there.

At times you might think this is understandable. Some churches simply do not look like churches. They may display no Christian symbol such as a cross. The building style may not make you think of ecclesiastical architecture, especially if the congregation is hiring a school or public building to meet in. If your idea of a church is a Gothic structure with a spire or a clock tower and pointed windows, by no means all churches look like that.

People should realise, of course, that church is not simply a building: it is the people that worship there. It is a pity if their publicly visible activities are permanently linked with the four walls of the building, as though they never related to anything outside.

It is always difficult to discern whether spiritual blindness is the fault of uninformed outside observers or of local Christians not having a high enough profile. In either case, the blindness in this country to the things of the spirit is profound and depressing.

If you talk about "spirituality" to people in the West, they may well think of Eastern meditation techniques or similar. These things may cultivate a more positive attitude to life, but they are certainly not the spirituality which glorifies God as the Lord Jesus intends. In less materially favoured countries the ordinary person is very much aware of the spiritual dimension. Their spirituality is vibrant and keen. 

Jesus's plan in encouraging people to have their spiritual eyes open is that they should see God at work and glorify their heavenly Father. Most of all it is only through spiritual alertness that they can find and embrace true life which He offers – eternal life, life in which physical death is just a momentary blip.

May we go through life with our eyes open, seeing beyond the merely material to the place where life is eternal and abundant and where Jesus Christ is enthroned as King and Lord.